Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm going to use my contribution on senators' statements today to talk about two recent events. The first is Children's Book Week, an annual initiative of the Children's Book Council of Australia, which this year takes place this week, from 17 to 23 August. The 2024 theme, Reading is Magic, is a perfect illustration about how books can transport you to other worlds, help you explore new ideas and help you understand different people and perspectives, and it also bolsters cognitive process. This is true of both fiction and nonfiction.

I was pleased to attend a book week function at Tasmania's Government House last week which celebrated the Read Aloud to Your Child Every Day campaign.

Leading this campaign is the president of the Toast for Kids Charity, Steve Martin. Mr Martin has garnered the support of the Children's Book Council for the campaign, with the aim of making Read Aloud to Your Child Every Day as ubiquitous as other messages like 'Life. Be in it' or Slip, Slop, Slap, Seek, Slide. It's a message for parents and caregivers so that reading aloud to children becomes a daily routine for every family. To promote this message among parliamentarians, I've joined with the member for Moncrieff to establish the Parliamentary Friends of Children's Literacy, and I thank all colleagues who have joined.

We know, from research, that reading aloud to children regularly fosters a love of reading. It promotes a number of skills including language, literacy, imagination and critical thinking, and it also strengthens the relationship between children and their parents and caregivers. I encourage everyone to make this simple yet highly important investment in our children's future.

The other event I'd like to talk about this week is Equal Pay Day, which took place on Monday 19 August, thus marking the 50 days into the new financial year that Australian women must work to earn the same, on average, as men did last year. Research by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency identified three main contributors to the gender pay gap: gender discrimination; care and family responsibilities and workforce participation; and gender segregation by job type and industry. The gender pay gap is now at an historic low of 11.5 per cent, down from 14.1 per cent when we came to government. While there are some cultural issues to overcome, there is also a role for public policy in tackling the gender pay gap. That is why the Albanese Labor government has supported the Fair Work Commission to increase the minimum wage on not one, not two but three occasions; required large companies to report on their gender pay gaps; expanded paid parental leave to six months; and encouraged women's participation in male dominated industries, through initiatives like fee-free TAFE. We will not close the gap overnight, but we are making progress.

We're also addressing the unfortunate historical trend to devalue jobs in feminised industries. One of these industries is early childhood education, and I'm delighted that more than 200,000 early childhood educators will receive a 15 per cent pay rise thanks to the Albanese Labor government. As a former educator, then a union official for educators and now a senator, I've been fighting for close to 40 years for the skills and experience of early childhood educators to get the recognition they deserve. While I've been advocating for educators and their important work, which is making such a huge difference to childhood development, I've heard ignorant comments by those on the other side that subsidised early childhood education is communism, a money pit and the hand of government reaching in and taking away the youth of our children and, more recently, that it is destroying the family unit. Give me strength, people!

Those last two comments were from Senator Rennick, and it's absolutely shameful that no-one on the other side has called out these ignorant comments. If those opposite truly believe in accessible, quality early childhood education and care, then they have to hold Senator Rennick to account for his outdated views and make it clear that they are not shared by the opposition. These last-century views and the lack of any challenge from his coalition colleagues—I haven't heard one person from the other side call him out—go some way to explaining why progress to close the gender pay gap was so slow under the previous government.

If nothing else gets taken away from my speech today, I would ask those opposite to make sure that Senator Rennick is educated in the importance of early childhood education and the value it brings not only to children but to families and the economy.